Depressed Turtle 鬰龜

June 09, 2006 (reposted from my old blog)

I hate to admit it, but the fortuneteller was right again. I did meet some intelligent people (aka 有識之士) since this summer.

4 of my students now:

1. G. is an ABC, speaks Cantonese, and provided me many useful comparisons among Mandarin/Cantonese/Taiwanese. And she has a fixed tutoring schedule for me to make things easier. She also inspires me to get in touch with business world.
   A, also an ABC, went to MIT for Bachelor and Master, received his Ph.D. from Stanford. Always teaches me some hi-tech terms and offers me ride home (though I never let him do so…)
2. T. went to Berkeley for bachelor, Stanford for Master, and are going to Wharton for his MBA (Wharton is the top 3 best public university in the U.S.). Always buys me coffee if we met at Starbucks, and is willing to travel to campus to save some troubles for me to get to downtown. And even though we only had one-hour session (when his brain was not working well…), or meet for 20 mins for discussing for materials, he would pay me the full amount of 90-mins hour pay.
3. M, the pianist, knows 4 different languages before he contacted with Mandarin. He really helps me to learn more about languages from his cross-linguistic perspectives.
   Below is what M’s analysis of 2 Chinese characters from his e-mail:
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   鬱: depressed, gloomy
   龜: turtle

When I thought of the turtle character, I was reminded that turtles have four legs, just like the four corners of the earth. Then I realized that in all over those corners there are people who are miserably unhappy because of the USA, which, for example has a military presence in 120 of the 180 countries of the United Nations.

And before I was born, the USA had already fought 145 wars, most of them undeclared wars, and then I recall that the USA has been at war ever since I was born, and that the USA, where people know only how to make money and how to kill people, piggishly gobbles resources and shows an environmental policy on of “war on terra” and threatens nuclear destruction of the world and is alreayd polluting the entire world with depleted uranium.

So that the turtle brought to mind the pressing need to dismantle the American empire before the USA destroys all life on earth. Which it probably will– and soon.

Should not the turtle be depressed?
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Isn’t he something?
I’m lucky to keep being educated by people who are kind & smart and I’m making money out of them….

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